Date: c. 1949
Origin: USA
Brand: Stayform
This is a product catalogue for the American foundations brand “Stayform” dated to circa 1949.
Inside, the copy in this catalogue relies on a marketing technique in which the brand insists their foundation garments are “not a corset,” “not a girdle,” and “not a corselette,” which were all associated with “binding the body” and “squeezing the figure.” Rather, Stayform advertised their “boneless, stayless” foundations as undergarments that would balance the body by perfecting “natural lines.”
The catalogue includes 15 foundation models and originally included 15 material swatches to demonstrate the “durability and beauty” of the mostly rayon and rayon-cotton blend fabrics used by the company, although two swatches are now missing. The final product included in the catalogue, called “anchorettes,” was trademarked in 1944 by another Chicago-based company called Beau-T-Form Foundations, Inc. and was designed to prevent foundations from riding up when the wearer went without stockings.
Rose Hanskat began her career selling women’s foundation garments from house to house in Chicago, Illinois. On April 27th, 1926, she registered “Rose Hanskat’s Stayform” as a trademark with the United States Patent Office, and on June 22nd, 1927, Stayform Co. was chartered as a corporation. In April of 1930, a man named Glenn R. Fouche was employed as a sales manager of Stayform Co., though he resigned two years later due to “differences of opinion over management policies” with Hanskat. However, in 1933 Fouche became the President of Stayform at Hanskat’s request. He held this position until 1955 or 1956, and an obituary for Fouche published in 1958 by the New York Herald Tribune erroneously credited him with founding the Stayform company in 1930.
Many thanks to Summer Anne Lee for the object description and research.
From the collection of The Underpinnings Museum
